The Plural Conjugation of Nadia in Tahar Ben Jelloun’s Les Raisins de la galère

Abstract

During her 2007 presidential campaign, Socialist candidate, Ségolène Royal, was asked to comment on solutions to the continuing violence in the immigrant-dominated suburbs of French cities. She responded by asserting, somewhat enigmatically, that the suburbs ‘ne doivent plus être considérés comme un problème mais comme une partie de la solution aux problèmes qu’a la France’ (France 2, 2007a). Her response pulls into focus a desirable change in attitude towards immigrants that reveals a shift away from the condemnatory reactions of the past to a more constructive approach to their presence — one that privileges the positive contribution they make to the plural society that is modern France. I would like to explore further this notion of accentuating the positive by examining a text by Moroccan author, Tahar Ben Jelloun, whose ‘récit’, Les Raisins de la galère (1996),1 explores the trials and tribulations of Nadia, a young woman of Algerian descent. Nadia is featured attempting to come to terms with her own plural identity, while working tirelessly to improve the lives of others like herself whose identities have had, in the past, to be negotiated around the historically rigid definition of what it is to be French.